


Taking Your Place

by Krasimer



Category: LazyTown
Genre: Glanni and Ithro have issues, Glanni is a shit, Identity Issues, Ithro fights crime, M/M, Pre-Robbie Rotten/Sportacus, Sportacus watches over kids, i guess, robbie is a dad, two sides of a coin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 07:41:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15925913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: The pillow underneath his head registered, finally, and he sat up.He was in his normal outfit, purple-and-maroon stripes everywhere, but he wasn’t in his normal location. Even the sky, out the small window he could see from where he sat, looked different. He saw stars, and that was fine and usual, but there were constellations he didn’t recognize. When he looked at the bed he was sitting in, he realized he wasn’t under any blankets, just sitting on top of them.Like he’d been deposited there by someone, like a sleeping child.Robbie took a deep breath, trying to calm the racing of his heart as he looked over the facts he had to work with.Fact one: Strange place. Unknown place. Different stars in the sky.





	Taking Your Place

When Robbie woke up, he wasn’t in his bunker.

That wasn’t normally a concern – he fell asleep on the park benches and other unusual places often. Waking up in a place that wasn’t home was a thing that happened sometimes. For a moment, Robbie turned over to go back to sleep, feeling like a lazy day.

The pillow underneath his head registered, finally, and he sat up.

He was in his normal outfit, purple-and-maroon stripes everywhere, but he wasn’t in his normal location. Even the sky, out the small window he could see from where he sat, looked different. He saw stars, and that was fine and usual, but there were constellations he didn’t recognize. When he looked at the bed he was sitting in, he realized he wasn’t under any blankets, just sitting on top of them.

Like he’d been deposited there by someone, like a sleeping child.

Robbie took a deep breath, trying to calm the racing of his heart as he looked over the facts he had to work with.

Fact one: Strange place. Unknown place. Different stars in the sky.

Fact two: He didn’t remember anything beyond settling down to sleep in his chair, last night. Early morning, really, but that fact remained. He had gone to sleep in his orange chair.

Fact three: There was –

Fact three was interrupted by a banging on a door and Robbie froze on the spot as he listened to an angry voice yelling through the door. Whoever it was sounded…Drunk?

With a nervous swallow, Robbie took another deep breath and stood up.

After a minute, the angry drunk seemed to go away, leaving what appeared to be a small apartment in silence again. Robbie wandered from the bedroom into the rest of it, looking around at everything. There was a pile of clothes and shoes, off to one side, and an odor came from the kitchen area that made his nose wrinkle. At home, just because he was lazy did not mean he didn’t keep things clean. A mess-filled kitchen would bring bugs and infestations and would require more work to clean up later than just washing his dishes when he used them.

Outside, through another small window, Robbie could hear cars honking, the sounds of big city traffic. That definitely clinched it: he wasn’t where he was supposed to be.

Going over to the second window, he found it cracked open slightly.

He could smell smog, the kind that came from living in a big city. He had spent a lot of his life in Lazytown, the smallest city he could find, because he hadn’t wanted to be around too many people. Some people were good, some people could be kind, but for the most part, people had only ever proven to be a hazard.

Dangerous.

Terrifying.

He had figured that a small town where everyone knew each other would be better for him, had moved when he was seventeen. Lazytown had been…Charming. Small. Run by a mayor and having only a handful of families.

Banging on the door snapped him out of remembering and Robbie ducked behind a chair on instinct. “Glæpur, come out this instant!”

Peeking around the chair, Robbie frowned.

Glæpur?

That clinched that: he was in someone else’s apartment, in the wrong place. He had no idea how he’d gotten there and he was, it seemed, stuck.

From behind him, someone cleared their throat.

Robbie threw himself sideways, trying to get out of range of whoever it was that managed to sneak up behind him. When he got a full look at them, he saw an odd picture that reminded him of…Something. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it.

There was a man in a mustard yellow outfit with brown armor on his chest. He was, it looked like, shorter than Robbie would be when standing. He also wore knee-high boots that looked capable of causing pain if he were to kick Robbie. His arms were crossed over his chest and he wore an expression of exasperated frustration.

As Robbie watched, it seemed to morph into confusion.

“You,” the man said, his thick mustache twitching as he stepped closer. Robbie flinched backward, waiting for whatever was coming. “…You are not Glanni.”

Blinking, Robbie nodded. “I am not,” he said quietly.

The man frowned, his hand smoothing over the fabric of the hat he wore. In the same motion, he pushed his hand all the way to the back of it, flipping up the tail of it and exposing a –

A crystal.

Feeling his eyes go wide, Robbie gestured for the man to lean down slightly. “You’ve got a crystal,” he said, confirming it with a careful glance. “You’re a hero?” he paused, then nodded. “Sportacus mentioned being one of the ‘numbered’ once, are you one of them?”

Now that he was looking, he could see a number on the man’s chest. The number, however, didn’t make any sense. Robbie had to ask. “Are there multiples of each numbered?”

“…No?” the man looked down at the number on his chest, then looked in the direction of the door. Someone was still banging on it, demanding ‘Glæpur’ come out. “If you are not Glanni, then this will not be a good situation for you to be in,” he muttered. He glanced back towards the window, his frown growing deeper. “We have to get you out of here,” he turned to Robbie again. “Come with me, we are getting you out of here.”

Robbie stood up slowly, watching as the man climbed back out the window. “What is—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish that sentence before bullets tore through the door, biting into the wall and making the air fill with an awful scent. Robbie gagged on it as the man yanked him through the window and into an air balloon basket.

“What.” Robbie looked around, knuckles going white as he clenched the edge of the basket. “What is _happening_.”

“My name is Íþróttaálfurinn,” the man said as he piloted the balloon away from the building. “And you are right, I am one of the numbered. But,” he grunted, pulling on a rope and watching as the building shrank into the distance. “I am the only Ten that I am aware of. I do not know what is happening, but I also suspect that you have fewer answers than I do.”

“I woke up in that apartment,” Robbie felt his knees buckling.

Íþróttaálfurinn nodded, tying the rope off and taking a deep breath. “What is your name?”

“Robbie Rotten,” he muttered, trying not to panic about how high up they were. “The villain of Lazytown.” He jerked his chin out towards the city they were slowly drifting over. “Not…Here. What would have happened if I had stayed there?”

“I…” Íþróttaálfurinn grimaced. “I got news of Glanni’s most recent plot, robbing a local jewelry store. He hired a new set of ‘helping hands’ for it. I think he may have missed a meeting, so they were coming to see if he was telling me on them.” He watched Robbie in silence for a few seconds. “Are you alright?”

Robbie finally let his knees go limp and dropped below the edge of the basket, blocking out his view of how high up they were. “I don’t like heights.” He said quietly.

“Oh,” Íþróttaálfurinn blinked a couple of times, then rummaged through a bag that was anchored to the edge of the balloon. “Here,” he offered what he’d pulled out to Robbie, a small smile on his face. “Anti-nausea pills, water,” he rummaged again. “And here is a blanket. It gets cold up here, sometimes. Especially when you’re not used to it. I am not going to make you look over the edge again, but did you see anything you recognized?”

“Nothing,” Robbie took a sip of the bottle of water, following that by wrapping the blanket around his shoulders. The pills in their little package stayed in his lap, unused for now. “Even the stars are wrong.”

“…The stars are wrong?”

Robbie nodded, taking another sip of water and letting out a slow breath through his nose. “Those ones,” he pointed at the nearest constellation he could see. “They look almost right, but the position of the stars is reversed. Where I’m from, we call it the Farmer’s Plow.”

Íþróttaálfurinn followed the direction of his finger and frowned. “That is the Big Dipper.” He looked back at Robbie. “That’s what we call it, at least.”

“The little one is called the Field’s Plow,” Robbie continued after a moment of looking at the hero. “I don’t know why, but that is how it is.”

“…When you say _reversed_ ,” Íþróttaálfurinn crouched down across from him, arms braced on his knees. “What do you mean?” he turned to his bags and packs again, waiting for Robbie to answer as he sorted through what looked to be a pile of maps.

“I mean they’re upside down,” Robbie continued to look at the stars around them.

Íþróttaálfurinn pulled one of the rolls of paper out and lay it down flat, anchoring each corner before drawing Robbie’s attention to it. “Here,” he tapped the paper, his finger on the stars they had been discussing. “The Big Dipper, The Farmer’s Plow. Whichever name we’re calling it. Are there any others that look wrong?”

Robbie leaned in to look, then tapped another one. “That one has too many stars,” he moved to a third. “That one has too few. Like two were just…Shuffled over to the other one.” He continued pointing out the things that were unfamiliar with the stars that were above his head.

Leaning back on his heels until he landed on his backside, Íþróttaálfurinn stared with wide eyes at Robbie.

“What?”

“I think,” Íþróttaálfurinn said, his voice strained and his jaw hanging loose. “That you’re in the wrong world.”

 

x

 

When Sportacus woke up that morning, it had seemed like a perfectly good start to a wonderful day.

The children were seen off to school, he had some time to himself to go check on Robbie. All in all, a good day. The man’s bunker, at the edge of town, was a good run if he paced himself and went slower. He and Robbie had gotten over the prickliness of their earliest meetings and now they were something close to friends.

It was good.

Robbie, when given room to be himself and interact without the labels of hero and villain, was a nice person. He had admitted to being fond of the children, despite them being loud. He and Sportacus had seemed to be making progress.

Which was why it was confusing to see him outside of his bunker, snarling at the billboard that hid the door.

“Stupid _cows!_ ” he screeched the words out, turning just in time to see Sportacus’s arrival. “Oh, look, an action figure, come to see what I’m doing.”

A couple of things occurred to Sportacus, then.

One: He had seen Robbie in a black bodysuit outfit like this one, but never this tight and shiny. The same went for the shoes the man was wearing. There were heels that Robbie would never have worn, particularly because they made him feel unstable.

Two: The man had an expression on his face that Sportacus _knew_ Robbie would never have on his. It was a mixture of actual anger and full-on hatred of something. Not even at his worst had Robbie looked like that. The way he held himself also wasn’t something Robbie had – the man held himself like he was going to attack. It was too much confidence and bravado.

They were working on Robbie feeling more confident, but this was not _that._

Three: There was a knife tucked into the edge of the boot. Robbie was Sportacus’s villain, but he would never actually carry something like that. Not for any attack he had ever done, and certainly never in that position.

Sportacus knew about the one knife Robbie carried with him, sometimes. It was for small bits of whittling he didn’t want to trust to his machines. It folded up and went on a chain around his neck, to keep the children from ever being able to find it.

Whoever this man was, he was not Robbie, no matter how much he looked like him at first glance.

“Oh, now this is just _perfect_ ,” the man hissed, his eyes narrowing as he spotting the crystal on Sportacus’s chest. “There’s a _hero_ , come to watch over me. Tell me, hero, do you fly over the city and keep an eye on all the good little boys and girls?”

“I have my airship,” Sportacus offered. “I prefer to come see people in person and say hello to them.”

“What, you’re coming to say hello to _me?”_ the man scoffed.

“Well, a little.” Sportacus smiled at him. “I happen to know whose home this is, that we’re standing outside of. His name is Robbie, he does not particularly like visitors without knowing who they are first. It is much kinder to respect that and wait until he has greeted you before you try and get in—”

“Yeah, yeah,” the man rolled his eyes.

Something inside of Sportacus seemed to _fracture_ at how flippant the man was being. This was Robbie’s home, maybe the man was a cousin of some sort? Even so, Sportacus didn’t think that Robbie would appreciate someone just randomly dropping into his home. He was surprised, actually, that there was no sign of Robbie’s periscope.

Usually, the man would have it out and looking around by now.

“How _do_ I get in?” the man raised an eyebrow and Sportacus noticed the eyeshadow he wore. It was paired with what seemed to be a matching lipstick. It reminded him of Robbie as well.

Alarms were blaring in Sportacus’s head as he stared at the man. “You are not Robbie.”

“What, are you his guard dog?” there was a sneer, this time. The man never seemed to have any pleasant expressions on his face. “You are being _very_ obtuse about this whole thing. Why is that?” he wore a smile like a knife now, as if he were trying to pacify Sportacus.

“Because I have grown fond of Robbie. You could say I have a tolerance for him,” Sportacus ignored the flash of giggly happiness he felt at the paraphrasing of something Robbie had said. “And you are _not_ Robbie.”

“Oh?” The man’s eyebrow arched.

Somehow, during the conversation, they had moved around the billboard and were now standing in front of the hatch. “And what are you going to do about it? You’re a child’s toy given life,” the man’s eyes narrowed. “An elf, a hero, probably flipping and flopping all over the place.”

And then he did something that Sportacus would not be able to forgive him for.

He reached for the handle of the hatch, seemed to be intent on opening it and entering Robbie’s house. Whoever he was, however he had gotten to Lazytown, Sportacus _did_ _not like him._ With barely a hitch in his step, Sportacus grabbed his wrist and held it tightly, feeling the bones shift slightly under his tight grip.

“What I _need_ to do,” he heard himself growl the words out.

The man looked at him with wide eyes, suddenly seeming nervous. His hand flexed in Sportacus’s grip, as if he were testing the strength of it. “What,” he muttered when he couldn’t get free. “I thought you heroes were _honor-bound_ to never do anything until it was proven without a doubt that the person you were confronting was the guilty party.” He pitched his voice up a little, trying to cover the nervousness he obviously felt. “Protecting humans is what we do, we’re idiotic saps who just love people!”

“That may be what the hero you’re used to dealing with is like,” Sportacus tightened his grip for a second. “But you seem to come from a big city. Let me give you a hint, whoever you are.”

“My name is Glanni Glæpur,” the man hissed.

“Glanni, then,” Sportacus narrowed his eyes at him. “We may be a small town, but I can assure you, we know how to protect the ones we care about. I am a Numbered, I am a hero, but my specialty is being a friend and guardian to the _children_ of this town,” he pulled, carefully, and made Glanni move away from Robbie’s bunker.

With that done, he let go of his hand and went over to the hatch, putting his hands on the edge of it.

Sportacus did not have much magic. He tended to focus what he had on keeping himself safe to show the children the safest ways of doing things. Now, however, he pushed it into the form of a lock on Robbie’s bunker. If anyone tried getting in, he would know. Not only would they not succeed unless they were Robbie, but Sportacus would _know_.

Turning to keep an eye on Glanni, Sportacus walked away from the hatch.

He just knew that the moment he left, the man would be trying to get in again. “Have a good day,” he said, automatically polite even to someone he didn’t like.

 

x

 

Íþróttaálfurinn watched the strange man he had pulled out of Glanni’s apartment.

So far, he seemed like a decent person. Scared of heights, confused by the world around him, flinched every time Íþróttaálfurinn moved too fast around him, but a decent person. He had called himself the villain of whatever little town he lived in, but he didn’t seem like a villain.

Robbie was a puzzle.

He ate too much sugar, enough that it made Íþróttaálfurinn almost want to slam-dunk a watermelon down his throat or something, but he was quiet and he was withdrawn and he seemed…

Scared.

Of too-fast movements and of never getting home again and the Numbered Hero he knew never knowing what happened to him. That was also a puzzle: another Hero Ten, not Íþróttaálfurinn, but definitely a Numbered. Robbie insisted that they had the same number.

Some of the others of the Order were small-town defenders, maybe he should send out some letters?

But Robbie himself made Íþróttaálfurinn want to take him someplace quiet and let him follow his nature. It was obvious just by looking at him that the man was an introvert, possibly had depression, definitely had anxiety problems…

This was not a man meant for the cities that Íþróttaálfurinn tended to patrol.

And he was definitely not meant for taking Glanni’s place.

“Robbie?”

“Hmm?” the man turned his head, his eyes still staying on the paper he was sketching something on. “Is something wrong? Do I have to move again?” he finally looked up at Íþróttaálfurinn, blinking a couple of times. The sketch in his hands drooped, allowing Íþróttaálfurinn to see it. On the page, there were drawings of a bunch of children.

“You’re fine,” Íþróttaálfurinn stepped closer, kneeling down to look at the page. “Who are they?”

“…The children of my town,” Robbie glanced at the paper again. “Bunch of loud brats, constantly keeping me awake with the sounds of their games. Only gotten worse since Sportacus came to town – can’t get them to be decently lazy anymore. They actually _like_ the games and the activities he gets going for them.”

“What do you do?”

“I try and stop them,” Robbie scoffed, as if the idea of doing anything else was ridiculous. “Everyone should be lazy, they might actually be happier that way.” He smiled, just a little, and Íþróttaálfurinn wanted to laugh. Robbie was posturing, pretending even without an audience bigger than a single person. “Sometimes I join in – only to stop them, of course!”

“Of course,” Íþróttaálfurinn sat down, leaning back on his hands. “What sort of villain would you be if you were joining in to have fun?”

Robbie nodded, pulling a face that reminded Íþróttaálfurinn, just a little, of Glanni. “Exactly!”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Robbie putting the finishing touches on his drawing of the children he obviously cared for. In his town, he was likely a stand-in parent of sorts, along with the hero Sportacus.

“Based off of the drawings of the stars you remember,” Íþróttaálfurinn hesitated, wondering how he was going to approach the subject delicately. “I think you’re in the wrong world. I know I said that before, but I have a better idea what that entails, now. There is a theory about parallel worlds, worlds that are sitting right next to each other in the grand scheme of things. If one were to harness a certain type of power or find the right weak spot in the walls, they could step through from one to the other. Like walking up a staircase.”

“So you think that this Glanni person did…What?” Robbie frowned, his eyebrows drawing down. “Switched places with me? Seems like a lot of trouble to go through.”

“Glanni is like that,” Íþróttaálfurinn told him, feeling a pang in his chest. His villain, the one that refused to understand that he could have a home to come back to if he would just let it happen. If Glanni would only realize that Íþróttaálfurinn would be waiting for him, if he wanted the elf to be…

But it had been _years_ and Glanni still had not.

It was likely he never would.

“But why me?”

“I don’t know,” Íþróttaálfurinn sighed, removing his hat and pushing his hair back with both hands. “If I could speak with him, I could figure it out, but I cannot. I suspect this to be the newest in his long line of schemes, but I can’t be certain.” He shrugged, trying to ignore the panicked look on Robbie’s face. “Glanni looks a bit like you. Maybe he was just reaching out for the nearest version of him to swap places with. Maybe the two of you are the same person from parallel worlds, maybe you’re the next dimension over, I don’t know—”

“And you can’t know unless you can talk to him,” Robbie nodded, his hands clutching his sketches to his chest. Definitely a stand-in parent, with the way he was protective of the drawings and drawing comfort off the memory of the children. “Well, this is fun.”

Íþróttaálfurinn laughed, tried to rein it in and calm down, then cackled again, devolving into giggles with his face pressed into his knee. “And what, precisely, about this is _fun?”_

Robbie’s eyebrows arched up and there it was again, the hint of Glanni that Íþróttaálfurinn kept seeing.

Ah, sarcasm.

He had never been very good at detecting sarcasm, which made it worse when Glanni or any other used it in excess.

 

X

 

It started out with a sunny day.

Trixie walked through the park with Stephanie, occasionally poking the pink-wearing girl in the shoulder when she got too bored. “We should go find the boys,” she stuck her tongue out at a bird as she chased it for a few steps before it flew off. “I think Ziggy has a doctor’s appointment today, though.”

“And Pixel is off visiting his grandma,” Stephanie added. “Which just leaves Stingy.”

“And he’s nice enough to play with,” Trixie sighed. “But it’s easier for him if we’ve got everyone. It makes it harder for him to decide our stuff is all his. More people means he has to share a little easier, especially if Sportacus is around.”

Stephanie smiled at her, then made a face as Robbie went pushing past her. “Ow,” she muttered.

Trixie whipped around to glare at Robbie, then stopped.

Something about him was wrong. He looked…Angry. Trixie had never seen Robbie looking that angry before. “Here, c’mon,” she muttered, dragging Stephanie over to a nearby tree and climbing up into the branches. Stephanie followed her, confused and more than a little upset. “Are you okay?”

“Robbie isn’t normally so mean,” Stephanie said in a soft voice, her eyes wide as she watched the man.

“That’s not Robbie,” Trixie muttered to Stephanie. “I know what Robbie looks like. You and I both know what he acts like. That,” she jammed her finger towards the man walking away from Robbie’s normal perch, the bench at the edge of the park. “That isn’t Robbie.”

Stephanie nodded, edging closer to Trixie as they hid in the tree. “No, it isn’t.”

“Now that we’re agreeing on that,” Trixie shifted a little, pulling her slingshot from her pocket and loading it with an acorn, the point of it aimed towards the man. She aimed, carefully, and let the shot fly.

“Trixie!” Stephanie hissed out her name.

Trixie covered her mouth, watching as the acorn hit the back of his neck. He turned on his heel and screamed, a sound rather than any sort of words coming from his mouth. They got a better look at him, then, could see where he looked like Robbie. They could see how he could be confused for the man who played the villain for them.

There was something about him, about the way he looked around and seemed like he wanted to hurt them, that made Trixie think of her father.

The man who looked a little bit like their friend _scared her._

After her mom and her had run away from her dad, her mom had promised to never be with anyone like that again. Had promised that Trixie would never need to be scared of someone like that again, not as long as she had a say in it.

She was scared, now.

She was also angry.

Trixie was named for her grandmother and raised by her mom, both of them the sort of person to teach her how to fight back. Especially how to fight back against people like the guy in front of her. She pulled another acorn off the tree, aimed, and let the shot _fly_.

It hit him between the eyes.

The man was knocked backward a bit, his feet having trouble staying beneath him; the heels he wore were knocking him off kilter. She aimed again, let another shot hit him in the shoulder.

He had hurt _Stephanie_.

“I know you’re _there!”_ he screeched, his hands curling into fists at his sides. His face was practically purple now, angry and loud and it only made Trixie angrier.

She loaded a stone from her pocket and an acorn at the same time, hitting him in the chest this time. She could hear the ‘thwack’ as they landed against the weird outfit he was wearing. Robbie wore weird clothes sometimes, but never like that. His were all cool or a neat costume or something fun. The man in front of her looked like a burglar or something.

Like he was only there to cause trouble.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Stephanie looking worried and scared, her hands clenched in her lap. “Don’t worry, Pinky,” she told the other girl. “I’m not going to let him get you.”

She could hear the beep-beep-beep of Sportacus coming towards them, his crystal blaring through the air as he ran. She could see him, too, off in the distance.

Trixie took a deep breath and kept shooting acorns and stones at the man.

It kept him distracted while Sportacus ran up behind him and wrapped what looked like a jump-rope around him. She had never seen the hero looking that angry, before, and it made the snarl building in her throat die down a little. Sportacus was mad too.

An adult was angry at what another adult had done.

The fight wasn’t hers alone.

“C’mon,” Trixie half climbed, half jumped out of the tree, reaching up to give Stephanie something to step on to help her get down. “Here, let’s go talk to Sportacus.” She took Stephanie’s hand as well, after wiping the dirt from her shoes off on her pants. Stephanie clung to her, her eyes still wide and scared, and Trixie felt a glare settle on her face as she walked towards Sportacus and Not-Robbie.

“Sportacus?” she called out.

He turned to look at her, then smiled after a moment. “Trixie, Stephanie. Are you two alright?”

“I think so,” Trixie looked at Stephanie. “Pinky?”

“I’m okay,” Stephanie nodded, edging away from the man wrapped in a jump-rope. “He mostly just startled me.” She rubbed her arm, where the man had slammed into her side as he walked past.

The man glared up at them from the ground, then rolled his eyes and stared at Sportacus. “Your children are your little soldiers, then?” his upper lip pulled back in a snarl and Trixie decided that she _really_ didn’t like him. “Tell me, elf, how many have you got running around and being your ‘Good Little Helpers’? How many people live in fear of your bursting through the door?”

“Right now?” Sportacus looked down at the man and Trixie felt a small kind of fear when she looked at the hero. She wasn’t afraid of him – she knew he wouldn’t hurt her or the others, after all – but she was starting to understand how scary Sportacus could be sometimes.

Like when a man had been found taking photos outside the school – Sportacus had talked to him and taken him to the police.

That man hadn’t been seen in town again, after that.

But the man on the ground looked up at Sportacus and hissed at him, like an overgrown cat. Sportacus, in return, leaned down to his face and smiled. “The only reason I am not retaliating,” he said, soft enough that only Trixie and the man could hear it. “Is because I think the children do not need to see it.” He straightened up and beamed at Stephanie. “How about we go find Stingy?” he offered her his hand. “We can see about setting up a nice game between the three of you.”

Trixie took his other hand and smiled, glancing back over her shoulder at the man. “What are you going to do with him?” she asked Sportacus, quiet enough so that Stephanie couldn’t hear it, either.

“Keep him from getting near you,” he smiled down at her as well. “I am not going to let someone hurt you.”

He started walking with them and it wasn’t until they’d left the park that Trixie realized his hat was missing.

 

The elf had left him alone and Glanni had promptly gotten out and away. He hadn’t lived his life as long as he had without knowing how to get himself out of a rope.

He was back at the tunnel that led below-ground.

The stupid elf had blocked it shut, somehow, had left traces of magic on it and locked him out. This was his counterpart’s home, Glanni chewed on a knuckle for a moment as he thought, there were things inside that might help him.

For anyone else, a magical lock might have been a problem.

For Glanni, it was just something he could get around. Leaning forward, Glanni braced both of his hands on the hatch, focusing on the magic he had at his disposal and shoving it into the wards the elf had left behind. Elves were stupid, always pretending to be heroes, always messing with his plans.

Íþróttaálfurinn—

Glanni winced as he thought his elf’s name.

His stupid hero, always unraveling his schemes, always keeping him from doing things he wanted to do. If they’d been in different places, they might have—

No.

No, don’t think of that.

Glanni growled and shoved at the hatch, watch it fly open from the force of his magic. The elf’s spells evaporated in seconds. The elf hero in this world was too much like Íþróttaálfurinn, for all that he was clearly different. This one was used to small towns and playing with children, not focused on bigger towns and bigger dangers.

He was tricky, though.

Climbing into the tunnel, Glanni slammed the hatch shut behind him, dropping through the tube and landing in what seemed to be a bunker.

The machines inside were _fantastic._

Some of them were ridiculous, truthfully, but many of them were wonderful, things that Glanni would have loved to have at home. With a small sigh, Glanni reached up and wrapped his hand around the pendent on his neck, finding himself having to force his mind away from thoughts of Íþróttaálfurinn again. The stupid elf had never stepped in to stop him in the right way, had never said anything about whatever it was brewing in between them.

If they were going to have anything, Íþróttaálfurinn would have said something by now.

It had been years, if Íþróttaálfurinn hadn’t said it by now…

He never would.

So Glanni had gone to a local magic user with a specialty and commissioned a piece. Swap him across worlds, take someone else’s place.

Supposedly take the place of someone who was this world’s variation of him.

Nothing could compare to the original, Glanni sniffed as he inspected what seemed to be a machine used to store disguises. Whoever had been here before had good taste in clothes, in machines, in a life that Glanni had no experience with. Whoever had been here had no bullets tearing through doors if something went wrong, no crews demanding their cut of the prize, no wounds to patch up when their hero went a little too hard.

If he looked closely, he could see children’s drawings.

Just like the hero of this world, their version of him was dumbed down and given to liking children and the coddling of. Glanni would bet that the version of him that lived here wasn’t even the sort to carry a couple of knives around in his boot.

With a growl, Glanni dropped into the fuzzy orange chair and put his elbow on the arm of it. His chin in his palm, he looked around the bunker and tapped out a beat on the other arm of the chair with his free hand. What he could do here, what he’d be able to do with all of this equipment, was up to him. The local hero was a bit of a problem, but nothing that some plotting wouldn’t be able to handle. The elf was just as annoying and bouncy as his brown-and-gold counterpart.

Glanni leaned back in the chair, reaching up to clutch his pendent again. His version of the elf was trapped across the worlds, unable to come and stop him. This was a world that knew nothing of Glanni Glæpur, knew nothing of the reign of crime he could go on.

A slow smirk spread across his face and Glanni took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a second.

Oh, but this was going to be fun.

 

X

 

Íþróttaálfurinn had landed the balloon about twenty minutes ago and hopped out, leaving Robbie in the basket.

He didn’t mind too much – from what he could hear, they were near a city of some kind. Lots of people, unfamiliar and likely unfriendly to someone they did not know. Robbie had never been very good with crowds of people, especially ones he did not know. Even when he did know them, crowds had never been his favorite thing. He liked the quiet and he liked the calm.

And even with how active he was and how active he made the children, Sportacus had been someone who had made him think differently about that. The singular exception.

“Robbie?” Íþróttaálfurinn’s voice came from outside the balloon. “Would you mind standing up for a minute?”

Feeling nervous, Robbie stood as the hero had asked, moving to the edge of the balloon and bracing his arms on it, his hands clutching the edge tightly. Standing next to the hero was a woman with dark hair, a man with bright blond hair, and a woman with pink hair. “Is everything alright?”

“Sort of,” the woman with dark hair blinked a couple of times. “Íþróttaálfurinn has been the hero of our town since we were children. He came and found us and asked us to come with him because something is happening.” She stepped forward, seemed to stutter for a moment, then continued, holding out her hand. “My name is Halla,” she told him. “And you look like someone who used to scare me.”

“Halla?” Robbie shook her hand. “I’m Robbie. I’m not supposed to be here.”

“Yeah, I kind of got that,” Halla’s eyebrows rose and she glanced at the other woman. “Solla, do you have anything to add?”

Solla, as Halla had identified her, stepped forward and Robbie felt something drop into the bottom of his stomach and possibly through his feet. It was rare for him to feel that off-balance, that out of place and lost, but this was one of those rare times. The children of his town were actually some of his favorite people, something he wouldn’t admit even under pain of death and torture. Solla watched him and he watched her, feeling like he had suddenly stepped off a cliff.

It was not every day, after all, that he saw the grown-up version of a little girl he watched over.

“Stephanie,” he greeted her before he could stop himself. He shook his head, then frowned. “Solla, sorry. You just look so much like someone I know, back home.”

Íþróttaálfurinn met his eyes. “They do look familiar, then?”

Robbie nodded, dragging his gaze away from Solla to glance at the man with them. He bore more than a passing resemblance to Ziggy, even as thin and adult as he was. Robbie could see the chubby-cheeked little boy who loved candy and he was hit with a wave of fondness for the children of his town. They’d been left to their own devices, most of the time, their parents off working and commuting to other towns. Ziggy and Trixie’s parents were just so busy all of the time, each of them working a couple of jobs to make ends meet.

Pixel’s parents were constantly travelling around the world for business.

Stingy’s parents were just…Absent. All the time. Like they were ignoring their son and the thought of that still just made Robbie so angry.

But he had stepped in as a parent for all of them. Their actual parents had been relieved, grateful to have another set of eyes on the children. The Mayor and Bessie were all well and good, but it made everyone calm down even more to know that there was a third adult willing to help out.

“They do, yes,” Robbie turned and grabbed the sketches of his children that he’d been focusing on when they were in the air. “These are the children of my town,” he offered them to Íþróttaálfurinn, then turned to adult-Ziggy. “What is your name?”

“Siggy,” the man smiled, gap-toothed and bright.

That clinched it – this was Ziggy, grown up. The youngest of the pack of children with the parents who were the busiest, Ziggy had immediately started following Robbie around until he’d helped the boy get introduced to the others.

Solla patted Siggy on the shoulder, then pulled a phone out of her pocket. “Nenni isn’t going to be able to show up,” she told Íþróttaálfurinn. “But Goggi and Maggi will. They just need to get here.” She tapped the screen a couple of times and smiled at Robbie. “You’ve got versions of us?” grinning, she looked at the drawings. Robbie had drawn from memory, so the details weren’t perfect, but it was a sketch of the children dressed as pirates on the top of the pile. He was there as well, in his full Rottenbeard costume.

Unlike what had actually happened that day, he had drawn himself with an arm slung over Sportacus’s shoulder, the hero dressed like a pirate along with the rest of them.

“Yes,” Robbie smiled at her as well. “I do. It’s odd to see you as adults. I’m used to you being children.”

Halla stepped forward again, crossing her arms and leaning them on the edge of the basket. “Am I familiar?” she asked, dark eyes studying him. “You’ve got different names for them, I’m guessing. I mean, I know you’ve got one for her,” she tilted her head towards Solla. “But what about me?”

For a minute, Robbie couldn’t place her.

Whoever she was in his world, she didn’t look familiar at the moment. It weirded him out a bit, but she was an elegant woman who walked with confidence. Those were things that a child could grow into, but he was not prepared for any of the children to be adults yet.

“Trixie,” he said after studying her face a little longer. The freckles across her nose and cheeks were what eventually gave her away. “The children of my town are so much younger than you, so it is hard to figure it out, but I think that’s who you are.” He glanced at Siggy, then smiled again. “Trixie, Stephanie, Ziggy, Stingy, Pixel. Five children, in all.”

“Five?” Íþróttaálfurinn looked up from the drawings. “Not six?”

“There was a sixth, but his parents moved out of town. His aunt got sick and so they all moved away to help her and their grandmother.” Robbie shrugged. “He was called Jives.”

“I brought you here to help us line us the parallel worlds,” Íþróttaálfurinn admitted. “It is nice to know where details fit in. It may help us figure out how to get you home again.” He handed back Robbie’s drawings. “These are really very good,” he complimented, then turned back to the others. “These are the children I watched over. Glanni invaded their town and got Halla arrested, then put Solla and Halla into the sewer.”

“The sewer.” Robbie made a face. “That’s disgusting. The more I hear about your version of me, the less I like him.”

“Well.”

“Consider that I started in his apartment and almost got shot,” Robbie countered before Íþróttaálfurinn could say anything else. Halla’s choked-off laughter made him smile again, even with him doing his best to tamp down on it.

They were still the children he cared for, even if they were named differently and grown up. It also gave him a spark of hope for a future possibility – Sportacus would stick around. Íþróttaálfurinn had stuck around for them and children didn’t continue to need their hero as they got older. They did, however, need their parents.

Hopefully, the same would hold true for his world.

Two sets of footsteps came running towards the balloon, a young man with bright red hair and dark skin followed by a boy with brown hair that had green streaks running through it appearing around the corner of a building. “Íþróttaálfurinn!” the man who was undoubtedly a version of Pixel called out, reaching the hero first and throwing his arms around him in a tight hug that had Robbie wincing in sympathy.

Íþróttaálfurinn only laughed and hugged him back. “Hallo Goggi!” he laughed again, pushing the man back and holding him at arm’s length so he could see his face. “It is wonderful to see you!”

The other young man stayed a little way back, shier than his companion, it seemed. “Íþróttaálfurinn,” he greeted the hero no less warmly and Robbie turned to study him. The green in his hair matched the shoes he wore, a pair of slim-fitting trousers breaking up the color of his outfit. The young man turned to look at Robbie. “Uh.”

“I’m not who you think I am,” Robbie headed off the panic he saw in the young man’s eyes. “Íþróttaálfurinn is trying to get me home again and, it seems, your version of me traded places.”

“Parallel worlds?” the young man stepped closer to Robbie, both of them glancing at the group that was now chattering excitedly about what they had been up to since they’d seen each other last. “I heard something about a commissioned pendent, the other day. My mother works in oddities and antiquities, she talks to some of the weirder craftsmen in the markets. Norn, the jewelry maker, told her that she’d been paid a lot to make something that would anchor across worlds.”

“…What was your name?” Robbie blinked a couple of times, reappraising the boy. They were not children, not a single one of them, but he couldn’t help but think of them as such. They were parallels of the children he’d been watching over for years.

“Maggi,” the young man twitched a little bit, his hands disappearing inside his sleeves and curling the fabric tightly around his fingers. His hands curled into gentle fists after that, sealing the sleeves off for the moment. Robbie could see the signs of anxiety, the tell-tale pieces of his appearance that hinted at some of the same problems Robbie himself suffered from. “Is there a parallel version of me?”

Robbie nodded. “He moved away, a couple of years ago. I have not seen him since, though the local chatter says he might be moving back soon. His parents are trying, at least. His group of friends were one of the reasons they hated leaving.” He paused, blinked, then turned back to face Maggi completely again. “Norn?”

“The local witch,” Maggi said.

“She makes jewelry?”

“And other things,” Maggi hesitated, then unfurled one of his hands and grabbed the redhead’s shoulder with it. “Goggi, what was that thing that Norn made you?”

Goggi, the grown-up Pixel, turned to their conversation and paused. It was like his brain was rebooting. “Oh, um,” he blinked, then looked at Robbie. “A good luck charm. I have a game tournament coming up and I wanted something to make me feel a bit better about it. The way the charm works is that it keeps me from worrying about things – I already know how to play the game, I’m nationally ranked. Less of a good luck charm and more of an anti-anxiety one, I suppose.”

Íþróttaálfurinn tuned in just then, reaching out and gently placing a hand on Goggi’s shoulder. “Do you suppose you might take us to her? We are trying to get Robbie home.”

“Oh, definitely,” Goggi smiled at Robbie. “Are we sure we can’t keep him? He seems nice.”

Robbie laughed. It might be nice to stay here, with these people who weren’t his people but were at the same time. They seemed to like him and he would bet that he would be happy here, if that was what he chose.

But he couldn’t choose that.

He and Sportacus had been friendly for a while, had been friends for a length of time Robbie would not admit to. The hero was a dork, kind and caring and oddly excited about everything, and Robbie wanted to always be near him. He couldn’t exactly pinpoint the moment he had fallen in love with him, but he suspected that it had been about the time the elf had arrived.

“You all seem very nice,” Robbie smiled back at Goggi. “But there is someone I have to get home to.”

“Aww,” Solla giggled. “He’s got someone he’s in love with!”

Íþróttaálfurinn’s eyes were wide and filled with something like shock, just for a moment. Just long enough for Robbie to see it. “Yes,” he recovered after a second. “He has a whole life that he lives in his world. Goggi, Maggi, if you would be so kind as to lead us to Norn?”

He helped Robbie out of the balloon and onto solid ground, following the two as they walked.

 

It was, Íþróttaálfurinn decided, a bit of a shock to come to the conclusion he had reached.

Robbie had someone he had to get home to. He had mentioned, on the flight into town, that there were very few people he actually got along with in his world. Not so much because he was causing troubles as it was that they were just elsewhere. Mothers and fathers of his little town were at work a lot of the time, home in time for the last meal of the day and little else. The only folk that Robbie had said he saw often were the Mayor and a woman named Bessie.

And, of course, his Numbered.

He had called his hero Sportacus. Well, he had also called him the blue kangaroo and the flippity-floppity nightmare, a couple of times.

But Sportacus.

And Robbie was a parallel of Glanni.

Try as he might, Íþróttaálfurinn could not help but think of himself and Glanni. If one version of them were close like that, able to become close like that, could he and his version?

Could they break out of the stalemate they had been in for _years?_

Íþróttaálfurinn did not know.

He could only hope.

The jingle of a bell dragged him back out of his thoughts and he looked around the small store the boys had taken them to. The woman behind what passed for the counter looked up from her work, pushing back the magnifying glasses until they sat on top of her head. “To what do I owe the honor of a visit from the hero?” she called out to them, her voice entirely free of sarcasm.

“You helped Glanni Glæpur, recently,” Robbie spoke up from beside him. “And I need to know where you helped him get to. Or rather, how to get back there.”

Norn, as Maggi and Goggi had called her, studied him for a second before heaving a sigh and dropping her face into her hands. The tweezers in her right hand narrowly avoided her cheek and Íþróttaálfurinn winced. “Oh, that idiot,” she muttered. “I told him that it was to be used only as an exploratory tool – he entirely swapped places with you, didn’t he?”

Robbie nodded. “He is this world’s version of me, it seems.”

“I warned him,” Norn muttered. “I warned him that he needed to be careful and I _explicitly_ stated that he should not switch himself into the world he saw. There is only so much the barriers between worlds can handle,” she stood up and bustled around the small table she used as a counter, her skirt nearly swiping the register onto the ground. “One second,” she held up a hand and moved towards the bookshelf, moving a hand over the titles and labels. “Every minute that he is there and you are here runs the risk of the worlds breaking down and falling apart. The worlds must always balance—Ah!” she stood on her toes and yanked a thickly-bound book down off the shelf. “If there is no balance, if things do not remain as they should…”

She set the book on the table and dropped to her knees on the ground. Her skirt billowed around her and settled on the ground around her, her hands a blur as she flipped through the book. “If there is no balance, the worlds will try to right themselves.” She continued after a moment. “I can make another pendent, exactly like Glanni’s, that will take you to where he is.”

Íþróttaálfurinn stared at her. “What did you expect him to be doing?”

“He told me that he wanted to see into another world,” Norn sighed and looked at the hero. “He was planning a heist and he wanted something that would give him an edge in that endeavor.”

“And you _helped him?_ ” Íþróttaálfurinn felt his face twist in horror.

Norn rolled her head on her neck, popping it, then turned to look at him. “A job is a job,” she said, her voice quiet. “If I do not take what I can get, I will fall behind on rent. I would prefer not to be a homeless witch,” she raised her eyebrow at him and he took a step back. “Work is work, hero. Not all of us are assured a job in this world.”

 

X

 

Ziggy was crying.

Sportacus nearly felt his blood boiling as he approached the youngest of his children. “Ziggy?” he kneeled down next to the boy. “Are you alright?”

“I’m—” the boy managed to sniff out before bursting into tears again. There was dirt on his hand and his shirt and he looked miserable. His other hand was curled in the superhero cape he wore, curling it around him like a security blanket. He was crying too hard to speak properly and Sportacus felt some of his anger melt away to make room for the worry that was building in his chest.

“Ziggy?” he scooted a little closer to the boy. “Do you want a hug? Hugs often make me feel better.”

Instead of answering, Ziggy practically launched himself into Sportacus’s arms, clutching tightly at his vest and pressing his face into the hero’s arm. After a few minutes of crying, Ziggy calming down enough to just be sniffling every few seconds, the boy muttered. “He’s so _mean_.”

And just like that, Sportacus felt his anger rising again.

He knew without Ziggy saying anything else that the boy was talking about the Robbie-lookalike. The Intruder, as Sportacus had started calling him in his head. Glanni, as the man had introduced himself. “What did he do?”

“He took my candy f-from me,” Ziggy’s voice trailed off into a sad little whine and Sportacus hugged him a little tighter. “I’ve been g-good lately and I haven’ had _any_ for _days_ and—and I was gonna share!” he pulled back so that Sportacus could see his face. “And he took it and I tripped when I was tryin’ to get away!” his bottom lip curled into a pout that made Sportacus want to find Glanni and smack him upside the head.

“Well,” Sportacus smiled for him, pushing his anger away for the moment. “When Robbie gets back, we’ll just have to talk to him about getting you a treat.” He stood up and picked Ziggy up, balancing him on a hip. “You have been _very good_ lately, Ziggy. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how little candy you’ve been eating lately.” He tapped the boy’s nose gently, feeling his smile grow bigger when Ziggy laughed, his tears forgotten. “I think Robbie would probably be happy to do that.”

“Where is Robbie?” Ziggy rubbed at his eyes, then yawned. He was probably exhausted from the emotional roller-coaster he’d been on today. “That wasn’t him.”

“No, it was not,” Sportacus turned towards the Zweet home, jiggling the boy gently as he curled his head down onto his hero’s shoulder. “I’ll find him, don’t you worry about that. I promise, Ziggy.” He felt his heart swell at the small hand curling tight in the fabric of his shirt. The children of this town were so dear to him, practically his own children now. He knew that Robbie felt similarly, as protective of the children as he was of his home.

“If Sportacus makes a promise…” Ziggy’s voice trailed off as the boy fell asleep.

“He will never let that promise be broken, not if he can help it,” Sportacus whispered, walking up to the door and knocking gently. Ziggy’s mother, home on her day off, opened it and gasped quietly at the sight of her son. “He has had a bit of an ordeal,” he told her. “But I am going to make sure that the cause is taken care of.”

She took her son into her arms, cradling him close. “Thank you, Sportacus,” she looked up at him. “Is everything okay?”

Sportacus met her eyes, one hand behind his back clenching into a nervous fist. “It will be,” he promised her.

With that, he turned and walked off towards Robbie’s bunker.

He had a feeling he knew where Glanni was.

 

When the smoke cleared, Robbie could have cried in relief.

He had never been so glad to see his town. Every building was a joy to see, everything practically screaming at him that he was home, finally, home and home and home. Even the air felt more familiar than what he had been breathing.

Standing next to him, Íþróttaálfurinn looked around with wide eyes. “I can see why you did not like being shifted,” he took a few stumbling steps, then blinked like he had just woken up. “And why you were so disoriented when I found you.” He smoothed a hand down the front of his outfit. “That was an…Unpleasant way of travelling.” He looked a little like he was going to be sick and Robbie nodded.

“I suppose it was easier for me,” Robbie looked around. “I was, I suspect, asleep when it happened.”

Regaining his bearings, he took off in the direction of his bunker, Íþróttaálfurinn on his heels. “We need to get Glanni home before anything horrible happens,” Robbie gasped the words out as he moved faster than he had in a long while.

“The walls of the worlds breaking down is indeed a horrible thing to imagine,” Íþróttaálfurinn shot back. “Do you have a plan?”

Robbie laughed. “Usually, I would, but—” he sucked in some air, trying to keep from passing out as he ran. “I suppose the plan right now is just to get into my bunker and send Glanni home. Norn said that the spell would end if the pendent was smashed. So, I suppose, I’m going to rip it off of him and break the thing!”

“Good enough for me!” Íþróttaálfurinn laughed.

He had never gotten back to the bunker so fast, Robbie realized, massaging a hand into the stitch that was stubbornly sitting in his side. Sure, he was sweating and feeling a little like he was dying, but he had gotten there faster than usual and that seemed like a bonus in this situation. Glanni would likely be unaware of their arrival, as well, so he had that on his side.

When he pulled open the tube to gain entrance, he frowned.

Someone had used magic to seal it, at some point. There were marks from a couple of different seals, actually. He seemed to have broken the second one when he’d returned home – this was his bunker, his home. It responded to him above all else.

Waving Íþróttaálfurinn in after him, Robbie dropped down and let himself roll into his home.

His bunker was a mess.

Robbie felt a whine build up in his throat as he looked around; Glanni had torn things off the walls and had tossed disguises everywhere. There were remnants of food on the counters and even on the floor.

The disaster himself was standing in the middle of it all.

“And how,” Glanni raised an eyebrow. “Did you get in here?”

“This is my home,” Robbie met his gaze, refusing to feel intimidated by a man in a black leather catsuit with a butt-flap. “Of course I can get in here. No magic you use will _ever_ be able to keep me out of my home.”

His own hands sparked purple as he spoke.

Robbie did not have much magic. What he did have, he tended to put into the things he made, the costumes he wore. His mother had once told him about his great-great-great-grandfather being a Fae or something, so he supposed that was where the power came from. He had to think that Glanni was probably the same; gifted with very little of his own magic, just enough to cause certain kinds of chaos.

With his upper lip pulling back in a sneer, Robbie stepped forward and watched as Glanni retreated. “You invaded my home, put me into yours – I nearly got _shot_ , you nightmare!” he felt his hands curl into fists, raising them to the sides of his head. “All because you wanted a different world?”

Glanni sneered right back at him, rolling his eyes before narrowing them at Robbie. “My world is too small for the likes of me.”

“Or you’re a coward who doesn’t want to admit that it’s too much for you to handle,” Robbie shot back. Behind him, he could hear someone drop down the entrance and he knew, somehow, that it was Sportacus. A part of him wanted to turn to the elf and pull him into a kiss. “You just don’t want to admit that you’ve failed at whatever it is you want to do!”

“I am Glanni—”

“I DO NOT CARE!” Robbie snapped. He was angry, properly angry for the first time in _years_ , and Glanni might as well have painted a target on his chest. “You put both of our worlds at risk with this idiotic stunt!”

Robbie yanked one of his enormous hammers off the wall, hefting it in his hands as he stalked towards Glanni. “You tried to replace me,” he hissed the words out. “Put me into your place and left me to take the blame for what you’ve done.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see both the elves watching him, Sportacus with a look of grim determination. Íþróttaálfurinn looked like he wanted both to stop Robbie and punch him, possibly at the same time.

Taking a deep breath and clearing the anger from his mind, Robbie shook his head. “You tried to ruin _everything_ I hold dear. The children, Sportacus, my life and my _home_. You don’t get to do that,” Robbie surged forward and snapped the chain of the pendent Glanni wore, throwing it to the ground and swinging the hammer up in an arc above it.

Glanni’s eyes went wide and he half-lunged for it. “Don’t—”

Robbie brought the hammer down on it, smashing it to nothing more than dust. Breathing hard, from adrenaline or from exertion he wasn’t sure, Robbie turned to look at his doppelganger. The edges of him were hazy now, the pull across parallel worlds taking hold. “Enjoy going home,” he told Glanni, leaning on the handle of his hammer.

With a growl, Glanni tried to swipe at him, sharp nails narrowly missing raking across Robbie’s eyes.

The reason they had missed, it seemed, was because Íþróttaálfurinn had practically dived across the room to yank him back. “Glanni,” he muttered, an arm around his waist, picking the flailing felon up off of his feet.

Glanni yowled like a trod-upon cat and tried to kick him.

For a moment, Robbie could see how he could have become like Glanni. A little more unhappiness, more loneliness, more anger at the world. If he’d been more extroverted, with those changes to his brain chemistry, he could very well have become Glanni Glæpur.

Instead, he had been introverted, filled with anxieties and depression, and had moved to a small town. Taking a role as ‘Villain’ rather than outright criminal. He had set standards for himself, had practically dropped himself into the middle of a game with the children of the town. Unlike Glanni, he actually liked children.

The magic binding Glanni and Íþróttaálfurinn to their world faded and the two of them disappeared without any sort of fanfare.

Just before they vanished, Íþróttaálfurinn smiled at Robbie, mouthing his thanks.

For a moment, Robbie and Sportacus sat there quietly, both of them just focused on breathing. Sportacus broke the silence first. “I can help you clean up,” he told Robbie earnestly. “Your bunker, I mean.”

“That would be nice,” Robbie nodded slowly. When he leaned his weight back onto his feet, his legs shook. He was exhausted, his entire body sore. Travelling through parallel worlds, it seemed, was an exertion of epic proportions. He quickly leaned back on the hammer, bracing himself against the collapse his body wanted. “It may also have to wait.”

Sportacus crossed the room and hefted Robbie into his arms. “Sleep comes first,” he agreed almost jovially.

Surprisingly, the orange chair had survived the onslaught of an angry magic-using criminal. It stood in the middle of the wreckage, unscathed except for a small rip on one of the arms. Sportacus deposited Robbie into it, smiling weakly. “It is late, after all. I should go sleep as well.”

Without really knowing why, Robbie caught his wrist. “Stay.” He said softly. “With me, I mean.” Something in his chest urged him on, urged him to be bold. He had to wonder if it was a slight bit of confidence that Glanni might have felt in the same situation. He had wanted more, with Sportacus, for a long time now.

He knew, however, that if circumstances were normal he never would have dared to do anything about it.

“…Stay?”

Robbie tugged gently on his wrist, gesturing to the empty space in the chair, next to himself. “Room for both of us, especially if we recline it.”

“Oh!” Sportacus blushed, an actual smile on his face. “I can do that.”

He settled in next to Robbie, pressed against him in a way that felt like a promise of a future. Robbie turns his head, just slightly, to press his nose into the elf’s hair. His hat had disappeared somewhere, vanished in the rush to keep Glanni from destroying their town. His ears were on display, delicate points and twitching gently as awareness seeped out of him.

“I am glad you were able to come home,” Sportacus muttered as he fell asleep, one of his hands settling on Robbie’s waist.

“I am too,” Robbie brushed his lips over the hero’s forehead, letting his eyes droop closed.

 

In the morning, they both woke up fairly early.

Early for Robbie, late for Sportacus. The clock said it was about eight-thirty in the morning, when Robbie looked over at it. Sportacus hummed quietly and stretched, making a face as his entire body was pulled taut. There was a cautious whispering coming over the intercom.

It sounded like the children.

In particular, Robbie could hear Stephanie and Trixie at the front of the pack, debating about knocking on the hatch. “Your children are here,” he nudged at Sportacus’s side.

With a small grin, Sportacus stood up and moved towards the hatch. “I think, after everything, you have a claim to them as well. And you should be proud of them,” he reached up to absently adjust the hat that wasn’t there, his fingers brushing nothing but hair. “They knew immediately that he wasn’t you. Stephanie and Trixie tried to defend your bunker.”

Something warm wormed its way into Robbie’s heart, both from the girls coming to his defense in some way and from seeing Sportacus with bed head. “What did they do to him?”

“I think he may have some bruises from where Trixie got him with her slingshot,” Sportacus winced a little, unhappy about the violence. Robbie could tell. “She is a very good shot with it and I think she may have been using acorns and small rocks.”

They climbed the ladder fairly quickly, popping up into the shining morning of a world that had been made Glanni-free once more.

All of the children were gathered around, Ziggy looking fearfully at the hatch with wide eyes. Stephanie and Trixie stopped in the middle of whatever they were saying to look at the two that had emerged. Pixel and Stingy were seemingly arguing over a small bundle of blue-and-white fabric.

“Hello Sportacus!” Stephanie recovered first, smiling brightly up at her hero.

Ziggy took a few hesitant steps forward, then broke into a short run when Robbie had touched down on solid ground. The little boy’s arms wrapped around Robbie’s knee, his face tucked into his own shoulder. With that done, Pixel seemed to snap into action as well, tugging the fabric free from Stingy’s unresisting hands. “Here, Sportacus,” he offered it up. “We found your hat in the park.”

Sportacus took it with a smile, arranging it and the goggles over his hair, tucking it all back into place. “Thank you,” he told them, his smile curving his eyes.

“I seem to have acquired something,” Robbie told him, gesturing down towards Ziggy.

Ziggy only hugged his leg tighter.

“Hey, kid,” Robbie uncurled his little arms, kneeling down to look at his face. “Don’t know why you’re clinging to the town villain.”

“’Cause he was _scary,_ ” Ziggy muttered, looking up at Robbie with watery eyes. “An’ he wasn’t _you_ and we didn’t know where you _were_ and you make things better when they’re too scary.”

“Oh,” Robbie blinked a couple of times, then pulled Ziggy into a small hug. “Kid, I am not going anywhere. Not for a long time. This last time wasn’t fun, too much exercise, not enough candy.” He pulled back, grinning when the boy laughed. “Trust me, he isn’t coming back either.”

“Did he get in trouble?” Ziggy asked in a voice that was much closer to his normal volume.

Sportacus kneeled down next to them, putting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “He got in a lot of trouble, Ziggy. I think he even got _grounded._ ”

With a burst of giggling laughter, Ziggy smiled.

Trixie and Stephanie both turned to face Robbie, eyes wide. Stephanie’s face showed an amount of fear, like she was afraid that the world she had gotten so used to was still in danger. Trixie’s face, however, looked determined and almost angry. “You did very well, from what I heard,” he told the pigtail-wearing girl. “Acorns and rocks, huh?”

“Yeah,” Trixie grinned at him, her hands on her hips, mimicking the pose Sportacus often stood in when he was watching over the kids. “He wasn’t you and we hadn’t seen you for a while and he looked like he was trying to take your place.”

Robbie reached out, hesitated for a moment, then ruffled her hair. “Atta girl.” He grinned back at her.

She caught his hand in between hers and held onto it for a second. In her trembling fingers, he could feel how afraid she had been, the terror she would probably never admit to. Robbie glanced at Sportacus, where he was gently talking to Pixel and Stingy about something. “Kid, what’s going on?” he asked, soft voice to keep the others from hearing it.

Trixie reminded him of himself as a kid – too proud to accept sympathy, scared of failure, putting on a brave face to keep others from knowing anything was wrong.

“He reminded me of my dad,” Trixie muttered.

And just like that, Robbie was willing to punch someone in the face. Strange how little effort it took.

Robbie had seen some of how Glanni acted. Given the situation that Íþróttaálfurinn had pulled him out of when he woke up in their world, he wouldn’t be surprised if Glanni had been a criminal mastermind and running a mob. If Trixie was reminded of her father upon meeting the alternate version of Robbie, Robbie would just have to be nothing like Glanni.

And, again, possibly destroy her father if he had to.

But he was here – with his children and with Sportacus and the terrifying version of himself was far away. When he looked at Sportacus, the elf reached over and took his hand, smiling at him.

This was only going to be amazing.

**Author's Note:**

> I am...Not quite happy with this but if I mess with it, it won't get any better. I think. I might edit it later.
> 
> But for now, have Glanni being a place-switching shit.


End file.
